Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.

Few men think, yet all will have opinions.

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.

That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so veryfew, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.